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Gehry to Turn Bacardi Complex Into Arts Campus

Many architects would be wary of touching a beloved Miami landmark like the multicolored Bacardi complex on Biscayne Boulevard.

But the architect Frank Gehry is a fan of the organization that just purchased it: the National YoungArts Foundation, a nonprofit that helps aspiring high school artists. He has had a long relationship with the founders of YoungArts — Lin Arison and her husband, Ted — who also created the New World Symphony, for which Mr. Gehry designed a new center in Miami.

And Mr. Gehry was intrigued by the foundation’s mandate: designing a master plan to convert the 3.5-acre former corporate campus into a multidisciplinary arts complex that will include year-round cultural programming.

Mr. Gehry will not change the signature Bacardi buildings themselves, whose exteriors were landmarked in 2009 and have long been admired for their tropical, Latin-infused take on Modernism, except to make interior alterations. But he will create a park and replace an existing office building — which is not landmarked — with a new performing arts center of his design.

“It’s not going to be a building that’s architecturally published in any way,” Mr. Gehry said in a telephone interview, referring to the public attention his projects usually get. “But it’s a place I want to go.”

A showpiece of the campus is an eight-story main tower, designed by Enrique Gutiérrez, a collaborator of Mies van der Rohe’s, and completed in 1963. The tower’s exterior walls are covered in a mural made of 28,000 blue-and-white tiles by the Brazilian artist Francisco Brennand.

Under the new plan, the tower will contain an existing entry-level art gallery, along with new administrative offices and housing for artists in residence.

Also noteworthy is a smaller annex building, designed by Ignacio Carrera-Justiz, perched 47 feet above the street, and completed in 1975. It is called the Jewel Box because of its glass mosaic walls, which were based on designs by the German artist Johannes Dietz. The walls illustrate the rum-making process: how stalks of sugar cane are converted into molasses. The annex will contain dance, recording and visual arts studios, work spaces and classrooms.

Until 2009 the buildings served as the headquarters for Bacardi USA, the American import and distribution arm of the spirits and wine producer, now based in nearby Coral Gables.

“These buildings represented our home — they helped keep us unified coming out of Cuba,” said Facundo L. Bacardi, a fifth-generation family member and chairman of Bacardi Ltd., the parent company. “So we wanted to make sure they ended up with someone who could extend that legacy of community.”

Ms. Arison and her husband, the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines, who died in 1999, created YoungArts in 1981 as the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, envisioning it as an organization that would develop talented young artists in the visual, literary and performing arts through mentoring, master classes and access to scholarships. Students are admitted by audition to intensive one-week sessions of training and performances in Miami, New York, Los Angeles and Washington.

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But over the last couple of years YoungArts has determined that it needs a permanent home, having operated out of a downtown Miami office building and borrowed spaces.

“We’ve been doing what we do for 31 years quietly,” Ms. Arison said. “There is no way anyone will pay attention to us unless we have our own identity in the city and unless we do things all year round.”

The organization wants to raise its profile so that it can reach more students. “There are far more talented young artists out there who need our recognition and support,” said Paul T. Lehr, YoungArts’ executive director.

YoungArts paid $10 million for the complex from its $42 million endowment. Its $6 million annual budget is expected to increase as much as 40 percent as its operating expenses grow.

YoungArts will collaborate on programming with organizations like the Miami Art Museum and the Miami City Ballet.

“It’s going to turn into an arts campus,” said Michael M. Kaiser, the president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, who has served as a consultant to YoungArts over the last year. “This is going to accelerate the artistic activity in the city.”

As part of its expansion, YoungArts will add a new discipline — architecture and design — to its existing nine: cinema, dance, jazz, music, photography, theater, visual arts, voice and writing. Mr. Gehry will mentor a group of aspiring designers in the preservation and transformation of the Bacardi complex. The organization has named Mr. Gehry an artistic adviser, along with the opera singer Plácido Domingo and the dancer Bill T. Jones.

More than 16,000 young artists have come through YoungArts, which pays their expenses, and the program has helped generate $100 million in college scholarships. Among its alumni are the actress Vanessa Williams, the recording artist Nicki Minaj and the multimedia artist Doug Aitken.

The HBO program “YoungArts MasterClass” features mentors in the program like the playwright Edward Albee, the opera singer Renée Fleming and the actor Robert Redford. Mr. Redford is interested in bringing YoungArts weeks to Sundance Institute, Ms. Arison said. YoungArts has developed a study guide, based on the HBO series, for high school teachers with Teachers College, Columbia University.

A version of this article appears in print on October 3, 2012, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Gehry to Turn Bacardi Complex Into Arts Campus. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe